Robotic defilade system

ABSTRACT

A barrier which is mobile and self-propelled and is controlled by remote control or by self-generated commands created in accordance with pre-loaded or downloaded instructions is disclosed. It can be interposed between a stationary or moving protected object and a suspected threat and maintained in that alignment until updated guidance instructions are received or generated.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

PPA No. 60/861,468

FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH

None

SEQUENCE LISTING

None

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of Invention

This invention generally relates to the fields of military vehicles and topographic engineering.

2. Prior Art

The present invention comprises combining three very well understood and proven technologies into a novel, new system to provide military commanders with a unique and valuable capability. Specifically it gives them the ability to move very stout protective walls easily and to take these walls with them to support their forces in battle. Moreover these walls can be moved virtually immediately as needed and even made to hold station at specified locations relative to moving vehicles. No one at the scene of the action is required to do anything to make this all happen except that the commander has to direct his desires to a controller or to otherwise transmit his instructions to the machines. Further, should one of the systems be lost to enemy fire in the course of defeating an attack upon a manned vehicle, the specific exchange will be considered a victory as long as the occupants of the manned vehicle are substantially saved by the sacrifice.

Military defilade is where a person or a vehicle is covered from enemy fire and concealed from observation by a physical feature such as a hilltop or a ridgeline.

The self-propelled, remotely controlled walls are created by installing vertical armor barriers upon suitably powerful and appropriately protected industrial level trucks configured with remote control systems. The armor so deployed will be considerably larger than could have been fit to the protected vehicles themselves. The entire system can be manufactured in quantity using subsystems long in production for other purposes. The objective is for the commander to be able to radically change the military topography to his favor with no support from military engineers whatsoever and to do so with barriers moving at vehicle speeds of up to the limits of a commercial heavy truck, depending upon the configuration specifics. Further, given that there are consumer market commercial sources for the system components, the recurring unit price for the vehicles should be well below $100,000, not including the amortization of related development and deployment costs.

Historically the ability for one side in a tactical skirmish to fire from behind a strong wall upon an enemy who is exposed upon an open field has proven a major, sometimes pivotal, advantage for the former. When configured as a closed perimeter surrounding a defensive position the wall constitutes a fort. The advantage of fighting an attack without giving up one's cover to do so was essentially what led the British to invent and field the tank during World War I. It was sort of a terrestrial extension of the armored warship. It could defy the German machine guns and move from trench to trench with relative impunity, and this helped it break the stalemate that had developed along the Western Front. Tanks, however, and their cousins, the armored personnel carriers, or APC's, have an active mission. Their roles are to transport and fire weapons at the enemy or to transport small elements of internally carried infantry and support them by fire. They are not of a passive role, not designed to simply be emplaced between the friendly and enemy positions so as to interfere with or entirely prevent the latter from engaging.

In a similar vein in the commercial world the cash in transit truck, or CIT truck, is commonly used to move paper and coin money from site to site with good security. Popularly called armored cars, these vehicles are typically created by taking and modifying the most fundamental automotive elements of a very heavy duty commercial truck. The adaptation is primarily to mount an armored cab and reinforced exterior to the front end and an enormous armor cell to its aft support frame. The CIT truck is a mobile bank vault wherein money is temporarily stored and protected by armored walls, locks, and armed guards. The armor for the cab and money enclosure and all the glass in the vehicle is designed to resist penetration by hand guns and rifles up to limits specified in the design Requirements. They are not impervious to all weapons, but they are relatively invulnerable to the ones most likely to be used by CIT truck robbers. Like the tank and APC, the CIT truck has an active mission and does not simply get emplaced somewhere to create a barrier.

No one has created a vehicle system that can provide the equivalent of walls that spontaneously move themselves to wherever the local commander needs them. This is particularly true when the need is for the mobile barrier to take a position relative to a vehicle which is moving and then to maintain that position. Such a system would be active in its own movement and relocation but passive in its tactical role, which is simply to be an obstacle in the way of hostile fire or movement.

Another physical analog can represent another mission. That analog is a set of hilltops behind which forces can take cover and that can be shifted upon command from locations where they do not support the commander's plan to other locations where they do. The alternate mission for the robotic defilade system would be to provide elevated observation and firing positions from behind armor.

The present invention combines and utilizes existing systems in a novel, new system for mobile, remotely controlled, physical screening. The barriers so deployed will normally be much more substantial than the defended targets' own defensive systems. Further the remotely driven barriers can intercept hostile fire at distances harmful to the weapons' terminal effectiveness. The system is useful for assault support, defensive operations, and patrol operations, the latter uniquely so. It provides structures, vehicles, and people a system to protect them against attack. It is uniquely helpful for patrol operations by providing a strong barrier that, once positioned, has absolutely no cycle time delay in providing 100% effectiveness against roadside bombs hidden in vehicles, against close in rocket attacks, and against all the close-in destructive attempts that are especially hard to defeat in urban areas. It is equally useful where natural or man made barriers channel formations together into unfavorable arrangements.

A major feature is that the protection can be provided under the control of people not in the immediate vicinity. In such an arrangement the use of the system will require no involvement or effort by the protected parties except to the extent that the commander coordinates with the remote controllers in real time. It is highly desirable that the duties of robotic vehicle control are not borne by people in the direct line of fire because then they are not distracted from commanding, from shooting back, or from driving a manned vehicle, according to their specific roles. It will be possible for local control in any of several ways, depending upon the configuration, but the primary mode is for control away from the immediate engagement.

The new system is not a weapons carrier or mobile fortress; it is a mobile wall remotely driven. It is rapidly emplaceable to quickly plug a hole in the defense, specifically to block an unobstructed shot line for the enemy to his or her target. Additionally, if there is a firing, the barrier will present a significant obstacle through which the destructive mechanism must filter itself.

The system encompasses three main parts: the barrier wall; the survivable, self-propelled carrier vehicle; and the command and control system, including all the elements of the remote control systems. This can be stated more concisely as the barrier, the carrier, and the command and control system. A baseline embodiment will be described, but the robotic defilade system is inherently able to be fully realized in vastly different configurations to match the varied requirements of different countries and different forces within each country. Even police forces may find such systems to be of assistance in limited quantities for riot control, for use in sieges of buildings containing armed suspects, or for forming impenetrable road blocks. The system will be presented as a baseline configuration and as a process for others to develop the specific variants which match their requirements. The baseline system itself is a model and would be further iterated in detail design before production.

In the world there is no system that provides similar capabilities. Moreover there is no vehicular barrier system employing remote guidance that can freely, frequently, and happily be sacrificed this way. Nor is it likely that one will be developed.

-   -   Tanks and APC's can be used in blocking positions, but there are         normally a limited number of these. Many of the places where         screening is needed are too tight for them to go, particularly         in urban areas. Many APC's cannot themselves survive a number of         the weapons to be defeated. Finally it is extremely undesirable         to lose an armored vehicle in a stationary screening role         because that is absolutely not the main reason for their         acquisition.     -   Unmanned guided vehicles, or UGV's, are being widely developed         for both the Military and civilian markets. These developments         tend to be custom built designs for exclusively active roles.         These roles involve shooting weapons, searching for mines,         taking chemical warfare samples, carrying cameras or other         sensors, or similar active missions in places too dangerous for         people. None have been developed to simply get up and go         someplace, there to sit until moved again. The main reason for         this is that prospective UGV systems have to perform a role that         will win development money, and most often that is for doing         what otherwise would involve heroically dangerous, active         things. It is hard to win money for passive activities like         waiting, even if it is at the right place.     -   This funding issue is particularly true in the rigidly         controlled development communities of the government and the         industry that support the defense establishments here and         abroad. They require a written Requirement before expending more         than token time or money on any new system. In fact, they turn         people away whose ideas do not align at least pretty closely         with an already acknowledged need, usually with a recommendation         to go see the User and get a Requirement written. The history of         the development of unmanned aerial vehicles since the Israelis         used them in the Bekaa Valley proves how long it can take for         even a clearly desirable system to get accepted and deployed.     -   Police agencies do not develop equipment like whole vehicle         systems.     -   With a probable recurring price well below $100,000 per vehicle         this is not a system that will generate interest by industry,         let alone speculative development.

Therefore, given that this system is almost exclusively for military combat purposes, and given the way funding for military engineering development is generated, a system like the robotic defilade is very unlikely to appear on any battlefield for the foreseeable future without an illuminating event from outside the formal development communities.

As will be elaborated upon later, all the subsystems of the new system have been extremely well developed. Multiple variants are in production around the world, and their implementation in a robotic defilade design is entirely deterministic and understood by persons skilled in the arts. The two keys to the new system are:

-   -   that the three main subsystems be combined as described herein         and operated more or less as described and     -   that the design and development processes take place in         approximately the fashion indicated later in this Application.

To identify highlights of that process, the specific missions encompassed and the threats to be defeated will determine the size, thickness, and material of the bather wall. The weight, length, and height of the barrier plus the weight of defensive armor, attachment fittings, and accessory subsystems will determine the payload requirement of the carrier vehicle. The environmental and support requirements will determine what extra margin, if any, in the payload is needed to reflect the added burden of extra drive train cooling under adverse conditions and to accommodate any other vehicle system durability requirements. Given all that data, it becomes relatively easy then to select from any of several companies' lines of heavy duty trucks to find the best match to the threat and the operating areas. The process will be demonstrated in this Application using the Ford line of trucks because their marketing indicates that a prime feature in their design was frame strength, a critical component in the performance of the carrier vehicle. Other truck lines could be used, and this Application does not endorse or favor any particular brand per se.

At the present time all the mobile protective systems are designed for point defense or very local area defense. Most are carried upon or integrated into the targets themselves. Many of the threats have extraordinary penetrating power that is very difficult to defeat with such point defenses, particularly the ones compatible with light vehicles.

Two references that will be cited later on are identified as follows:

-   “An Overview of the Shaped Charge Concept,” William Walters, USMA,     11^(th) AUTS, date unknown -   Tactical Missile Warheads; edited by Dr. Joseph Carleone; published     by the American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics;     copyrighted 1993. Citations will include the acronym TMW, the     specific author, and the page number.

Requirements: Vehicles to be Protected

The baseline system is designed to protect two sets of vehicular targets and the people within them. The designation of these targets and the specification of the Requirements in regard to their defense allows for practical solutions which are not too large nor too weak to be widely deployed and used effectively in most other scenarios as well. Two specific vehicles are used to represent the protected target sets. The degree of protection sought is “occupant survival without loss of life or limb in vehicles hit by various weapons less destructive than those capable of single shot kills against modern main battle tanks.”

-   -   M109 High Mobility Multi Purpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV.         HMMWV is the standard utility vehicle of the US Army and US         Marine Corps. It has an approximate length of 15.8 feet, height         of 6.2 feet, and ground clearance of 1.5 feet. The extended         performance versions of these vehicles, which are the more         heavily armored variants, are of similar dimensions. They are         being subjected to ambush attacks by improvised explosive         devices, or IED's, and explosively formed projectiles, EFP's,         widely in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The area within the vehicle         which needs to be protected from direct effects is estimated to         be 5 feet high and 7 feet long.     -   Stryker is an eight wheeled vehicle used in ten different         versions by the US Army in the Stryker Brigade. The Stryker         Brigade is a combat unit originally established to develop         hardware and doctrine for future main combat formations         featuring exceptional mobility and deployability with effective         combat power. The Stryker Infantry Carrier and the USMC LAV 25,         a slightly smaller vehicle derived earlier than the Stryker from         the same root design, are both being used extensively in Iraq         and Afghanistan for patrolling and assault operations. They are         subjected to a heavy threat of ambush by IED's and EFP's. The         Stryker is approximately 10.3 feet high and 24 feet long. The         area within the vehicle that needs to be protected is estimated         to be 7 feet high and 18 feet long.

The area to be protected in the Stryker is 3.6 as large an area as that for the HMMWV. Given that one square foot of armor steel which is one inch thick weighs approximately 41 pounds, a single plate to protect each would weigh 5,200 pounds for the armored vehicle and 1,435 pounds for the utility truck. For greater plate thickness the weight goes up approximately proportionately. On the mitigating side, though, the Stryker is already more heavily armored than even the armored HMMWVs; it can meet the survivability requirement with less support by complementary ballistic protection on a companion vehicle.

Requirements: Weapons to be Defeated

the weapons to be defeated include all traditional small arms, man portable rockets, fragmentary warheads detonated within otherwise lethal range as mines; small cannon kinetic energy penetrators, and all the variants of shaped charge warheads. These latter include acutely conical liner shaped charges, hemispherical liner shaped charges, and explosively forged penetrators, also called EFP's.

The meaning of EFP varies. For this Application the distinction will be used that explosively formed projectile is an inclusive term that can generally be applied to shaped charge warheads. That is because their kill mechanisms with respect to light armor and lightly armored trucks include a substantial contribution from liner material that has been formed into a very high speed slug or a dart. The term explosively forged penetrator will be considered one specific variant of the three types of shaped charges, the one where the included angle at the apex of the liner is at least 150 degrees.

The weapons to be defeated also include all the kill mechanisms associated with improvised explosive devices, a class of field expedient weapons made from whatever is at hand. The best known of these currently is probably where bunches of artillery shells have been wrapped together and then detonated, by remote control as ambush weapons. Alternatives include wrapping explosives with heavy nails and any other assembly constructed of whatever is available at the time for destructive purposes.

While the killing mechanism of kinetic energy projectiles and explosive, fragmentary weapons are generally understood by most people, the mechanisms of shaped charges are not. FIGS. 1 a, 1 b, and 1 c depict these three warheads, the acutely conical and hemispherical liner configurations and the explosively forged penetrator and their liners 18, 19, and 20 in that order.

The first two variants, shaped charge warheads with acutely conical or hemispherical liners, will form fluid metal streams as small as approximately ¼ inch in diameter traveling at speeds above 2 km/sec. As pointed out by Walter Williams on page 2 of his paper, these streams are not plasma, molten metal, or liquid metal but “an inviscid, incompressible fluid.” Their temperature of about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit is well below the melting point of copper, which is 1,984 degrees Fahrenheit. They exist in a plastic state, and when the jet breaks into separate, tiny elements these are not droplets so much as particles. They are extremely high pressure fluid streams at extremely high speed. Surprising to most, the 1,000 degree temperature is not actually a major factor in their destructive effect per se. It really represents an additional level of thermal energy carried by the fluid in addition to the extraordinary kinetic energy.

The acutely conical variants have included angles at the apex of between 30 and 60 degrees. Those with the highest penetrating capabilities create a jet whose head travels at about 10 km/sec and its tail at 2 km/sec. Carleone states on page 66 of TMW that approximately 15% of the original liner mass travels in the jet at speeds above 2 km/sec. The other 85% forms the slug, an irregularly formed shape which trails the jet. The slug travels at about 1 km/sec, according to Walters on page 2 of his article. The slug does not contribute appreciably to the target kill for a hard target like a main battle tank. It could, however, have a very serious effect on a relatively soft target, like an armored utility truck.

The penetration capability in the leading particles in the fluid metal comes from the massive over pressure of millions of pounds per square inch they collectively will impart at the point of impact. For jets at and above a critical speed every barrier material loses its ability to resist the penetration. This speed varies from material to material, but it is characteristic for every different material. For steel that speed is 4 km/sec. Chi states on page 466 of TMW that at this speed the strength of the steel has no effect on resisting the penetration. This means that the portion of the jet meeting at least the critical speed will be simply irresistible, and the hole it forms will continue to move back into the target until the jet slows.

The tip of the jet will hydrodynamically erode the armor and push the hole before it. It is not a melting action. Walters points out on page 2 of his paper that the temperature in the material at the point of penetration only rises to 20% to 50% of the target's melt temperature. The hydrodynamic erosion caused by the metal jet is like what happens when a fire hose blasts into a loosely packed hillside, but the over pressure of the fluid metal is massively greater than that of the water. Carleone states on page 357 of TMW that the residue of the liner below the critical speed often will not contribute at all to the penetration depth. That of course does not mean that for a lightly armored target it does not contribute to the overall destruction. For a soft target, such as the pilot house of a boat, the copper stream may pass right through the target, and the main kill mechanism may be the blast, shock, and a special kind of debris called spall.

After penetrating the exterior armor, the jet can kill the target or its occupants by imparting enormous shock to the target's own ammunition or fuel and causing it to explode. In the Wars in Iraq there were numerous tanks whose turrets were blown clear off the hull by single hits of missiles containing less than 15 pounds of explosive in their warhead. It wasn't the striking missiles that blew off the turrets; they didn't have nearly enough explosive to do that. It was the target's own ammunition arrayed at the base of the turret, multiple five inch diameter tank rounds, which was detonated all together by the missile hit that blew off the turret.

An acutely conical liner weapon also causes serious damage inside an armored vehicle by the violent action of spall. Spall is metal forcibly exfoliated out of the back side of the target's own armor. This is caused by the advancing shock waves. These waves have no way to discharge their energy as they approach the inner face so they transfer it into sections of the wall which then fling themselves from the inner face into the compartment. Once ejected from the back side of the armor plate into the crew compartment, spall acts like shrapnel. Additional effects of the jet stream impact are blinding light, temperature spiking, and disorienting noise.

An acute conical liner warhead can be detonated with great effectiveness anywhere from right against its target to as far away from the target as about 14 times the diameter of its main charge. Warhead standoff at detonation is measured by the number of charge diameters, or CD. Above about 14 CD the coherence of the jet starts to degrade, and by 20 CD, according to Carleone's illustration on page 67 of TMW, it has lost about 40% of the power it would have displayed at optimal standoff. At that point its ability versus a hard target would have been compromised, but against a soft target the difference would be inconsequential.

The hemispherical variants form jets that are slower than the acutely conical designs and have a tip speed of 5 km/sec to 6 km/sec. Carleone states on page 318 of TMW that the hemispherical design is able to incorporate 60% to 80% of the mass of the original liner in its jet. Due to their slower tip speeds, the hemispherical liner products have less penetrating capability versus the hardest targets. They can be effectively fired at a target from much further away, however.

The third type of shaped charge warhead, explosively forged penetrator, initially resembles the other two except that the angle between the sides of the liner, as previously noted, is 150 degrees or more. The liner is almost flat. The detonation of the warhead forms the liner material into a specific shape according to the target for which it was designed. The projectiles formed and accelerated toward the target may resemble metal potatoes, or they may be finely shaped darts with fins. Carleone states on page 68 of TMW that virtually all the mass of the liner is captured in the projectile, versus only 15% for the acutely conical designs. The speed of the explosively forged penetrator is on the order of 2 km/s to 3 km/s.

Historically copper and iron liners have supported length to diameter ratios for these penetrators on the order of 3 to 1. Data from Chi on pages 481 and 482 of TMW indicates that when a hard penetrator is fired into a comparable metal plate the penetration is relatively low, normally slightly less than the length of the penetrator itself. For thicknesses of armor much less than the length of the dart, though, the residual velocity and kinetic energy produce severe behind armor destructive effects.

Other anti tank warheads include the high explosive squash head, or HESH, warhead and anti tank weapons relying on the kinetic energy of the projectiles.

HESH is a type of weapon wherein the warhead doesn't explode immediately upon impact. Instead it causes the explosive to be flung onto the target and there to form a coating. Then a base fuze mechanism detonates the coating. The HESH creates a shock wave that creates enormous behind armor effects. The speed of HESH weapons is not a critical contributor per se to its killing mechanism. It must hit the target armor, though, to be effective. Being detonated at a distance from the target can greatly reduce the effect, particularly if there is another surface between the launch point and the aim point to completely arrest the explosive coating material at a remove from its target.

Kinetic energy weapons are typically solid projectiles wherein relatively small darts of very dense, rigid material traveling at extremely high speed provide a very efficient way to transfer a very large amount of kinetic energy to a very small spot on the target. Fineness ratios are on the order of 8 to 1 and 10 to 1. Depleted uranium, a popular choice for KE rounds, is about 2.5 times as dense as steel rolled homogeneous armor, or steel RHA. The most powerful kinetic energy projectiles are fired from the barrels of main battle tanks and travel at approximately 1.5 km/s. Smaller caliber KE rounds may travel this fast, but their mass and power are proportionately less.

Existing Defenses and their Constraints

There are no unmanned, guided, self-propelled vehicles with a dedicated mission of providing passive protection by being a physical barrier against weapons. At present there are only point defenses on the targets themselves and a variety of jammers and other weapons guidance disabling devices with highly localized coverage.

Tanks and APC's can be utilized as tactical barriers, and it is not uncommon to see such being done in places where maximum security is in effect. During a popular uprising, for example, one highly visible demonstrator of the government's control is to park a couple of tanks in major intersections or to ring the palace with tanks and APC's. These vehicles, however, are highly suboptimal choices for such screening on a wide battlefield or even for wide use in an urban area. Tanks are relatively few in number, and their unique characteristics are largely wasted in blocking positions except of the most important nature. They have extremely high consumption rates for fuel; they require a lot of maintenance; and their sheer size limits their ability to move in urban areas. Further, in urban areas their mere passage tends to do a lot of damage. APC's, on the other hand, have these problems to a much lower degree. Their armor, though, is so thin that many of them cannot effectively shield against all the weapons needed to be defeated. Some of these weapons can shoot right through an APC and still kill the target on the other side. Further the replacement price for both tanks and APC's is too high to allow them to be used freely as sacrificial barriers.

The point defenses to defeat the threats identified include shear mass in armor and a variety of defensive mechanisms to reduce the attackers' penetration capabilities without adding as much weight as solid metal armor. In very heavy vehicles armor mass is provided with steel RHA. In lighter armored vehicles sometimes aluminum armor is used instead. Despite their massiveness neither of these defenses is sufficient in itself. The closest thing to impenetrable armor is depleted uranium, or DU, armor, which proved itself virtually invulnerable in the Gulf Wars.

Nothing exists which can be mounted upon light armored vehicles and wheeled vehicles that will provide survivability against weapons with a high single shot kill probability versus main battle tanks. Examples of these are a kinetic energy penetrator fired from the big gun of a main battle tank or the jet of a 155 mm diameter anti tank shaped charge warhead detonated within about a dozen charge diameters of the target. For smaller caliber KE weapons and other types of weapons there are ways to degrade an attack. All such defenses, however, have limitations and issues that constrain their value as point defenses on the target.

The problems with armor mass include the obvious, negative impact on expense, mobility, fuel consumption, and vehicle maintenance and durability. The most effective option to date, attachable kits of depleted uranium, suffers all these detriments to elevated degrees plus it has unique and severe environmental and political issues. The other systems' problems include their own weight and bulk, which may be less than RHA or aluminum sheet but are still considerable, at least in arrays substantial enough to be effective.

The less massive approaches include layered armor, reactive armor, and several externally mounted devices.

-   -   Layered armor, also called Chobham armor and composite armor,         relies on a combination of shock absorption by ceramic plates         and, for fluid metal streams, refraction in non-orthogonal         layers of different materials.     -   Reactive armor relies upon extremely rapid acting systems. These         systems are triggered by the actual impact of the weapon to be         defeated and then execute a reaction cycle to counter the         effectiveness of the penetrating agent. The best known reactive         armor is explosive reactive armor, or ERA. In an ERA system a         number of boxes of explosives are mounted on the vehicle         exterior. They feature heavy top and bottom plates. When the         attacking weapon strikes the ERA box it detonates the explosive         which in turn flings the heavy top and bottom plates outward.         The penetrator may be impacted by either or both of these         interceptors, in which event it may be partially de-energized         and partially deflected. There are also some disruptive         turbulence effects that linger from the explosion of the box         itself.     -   The other devices include a variety of designs to dissipate the         energy or otherwise reduce the penetrating power of the kill         mechanism. This includes spall liners. Spall liners are curtains         of fragment resistant fibers emplaced against the inside walls         of a target. They prevent the spall created by a strike from         being able to spread out unchecked into the compartment.

ERA poses a severe threat itself to damage the vehicle on which it rides, especially if there is sympathetic detonation between multiple explosive boxes. It inherently endangers any friendly troops and vehicles nearby, and there are other issues as well.

It has been discovered that some composite materials have an increased ability to withstand the metal stream due to their compressibility. This and their light weight have stimulated renewed interest in composites for stopping hypersonic fluid metal. Nonetheless these are not capable of providing all the protection needed in a light vehicle compatible design.

There are active vehicle defensive systems that are designed to prevent or degrade an attack by intercepting the missile inbound before it can impact. They essentially shoot down the inbound weapon. There are others that attempt to degrade an attacking missile's guidance to the point where a serious hit is unlikely. The problem with all these is that they are useful primarily against missiles traveling at subsonic or low supersonic speeds from at least several kilometers away. Such defensive systems are not effective against ambush weapons such as antitank missiles launched from one side of the road toward a vehicle in that same street. Nor are they effective for attacks with weapons whose kill mechanisms travel at more than 1 km/sec. Nor are the most effective ones inexpensive enough to be fitted to any but the most expensive targets, main battle tanks.

In U.S. Pat. No. 5,576,508 (1996) Korpi describes a system that transports armor plates and also provides a mechanical apparatus to deploy them prior to entering the engagement. Specifically the stored armor plates are rolled outward away from the vehicle body on carriers at the time of tactical operations. This allows for better overall mobility while still allowing the emplacement of armor at a large number of charge diameters from the target for the purpose of causing suboptimal detonation of shaped charge warheads. The problem with this is that the mass and bulkiness of the system will generate issues in tactical reliability and support, especially in adverse terrain and weather. These problems will be exacerbated by trying to build a system for relatively light vehicles with enough mass or enough standoff between the plates and the target to defeat modern weapons.

The Development Process and the State of the Art in the Subsystems

The general process for development of a robotic defilade vehicle is as follows. Failure to follow a process of similar rigor will invite serious suboptimization, especially in demanding environments.

1. Develop the System Requirements, especially the missions encompassed, the targets to be defended against, and the criteria for success; the threat weapons and tactics to be defeated; the human interface and operational requirements; the command and control requirements; the environmental requirements; and the support requirements. For the relay subsystems utilize existing systems as much as possible, including especially the multitude of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAV's, already in service. To actually gain their use these systems may need a limited adaptation for the relay role. Also the deployment of the robotic defilade system may require additional UAV's to be purchased and deployed with them to accommodate the new or expanded mission. 2. Select a barrier wall material, size, and thickness according to the mission and threat Requirements. 3. From a table of the payload capabilities of the different trucks being considered select a model that can mount the bather wall, all its fittings and supports, the protective armor for the carrier vehicle, and the command and control and any other subsystems incorporated into the system. Normally trucks sold for really heavy duty work are advertised in their chassis cab configurations. The chassis cab configuration is the vehicle ladder frame plus the automotive components such as the drive train and the suspension plus the cab and the front exterior components. The aft frame area is left bare so the buyer can specify exactly what enclosure or load platform he wants to mount on the aft frame rails. The vehicles to be acquired for the robotic defilade system will have even fewer components on them than the chassis cab level. That is because none of the elements of the standard civilian shell will provide adequate armor protection for the vehicle's own survivability. Adequate consideration to cooling and other reliability and support issues may be handled by imposing an excess payload margin on the criteria. When the carrier vehicle is to be an adaptation of an existing truck the selected vehicle will immediately become part of the configuration. When the design will be a custom design the truck selected will help form the basis for the subsystems' design and the weight budgets. 4. Select the command and control approach and the specific mechanization. When the make or buy decision preparation commences there will be an enormous variety of sources and a great range of suppliers. 5. Create the Preliminary Design. This identifies the identity of the separate parts. 6. Analyze the performance and weight budget trade offs, and iterate the design as necessary. Use modeling and testing as necessary. 7. Based on the findings in 6 above, create the Detailed Design. This is the nominal production configuration, subject to testing. 8. Fabricate test articles, conduct tests, and make adjustments as necessary to create the Production Data Package.

The state of the art in all three main component subsystems is very well advanced with decades or more on every one of them. Specifically it is as follows:

-   -   Armor Wall. Whether RHA steel, aluminum, or composite material         is selected, the acquisition agencies and industry are very         experienced with the alternatives. Design work is entirely         deterministic.     -   Carrier Vehicle. This technology is 100 years old. The recent         fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has greatly expanded the         understanding of designing for excessively hot environments and         high, steep mountain roads in poor condition.     -   Remote Control Systems, including Relay Components. Remote         control of ground, water, and airborne vehicles currently has         over five decades of formal development for military, space, and         hobby uses. The fundamental components are control switches at         the operator station, operator display systems, transmitters,         receivers, power supplies, logic units, and electrical,         electro-mechanical, and electro-pneumatic actuators. These have         been proven in thousands of predecessor systems including         hundreds of models of remotely controlled car, airplane, and         ship models. These collectively are known as RC models. The         component parts have also been proven in dozens of military UAV         systems; thousands of torpedoes and guided missiles, especially         the command guided ones; and in the many space systems that fly         through space or traverse alien worlds as servos to earth-bound         control systems. The sophistication of the subsystems for even         consumer market, remotely controlled models is surprising. The         TRAXXAS T-Maxx, an off-road RC car model slightly less than 22         inches long and easily carried by hand, for example, not only         has remotely operated throttle, steering, and four wheel braking         systems, but a suspension system with eight shock absorbers and         a four wheel drive transmission. This transmission has a reverse         gear and a two speed, auto-shifter-controlled forward drive. The         transmission is patented, U.S. Pat. No. 6,367,345. Numerous         other patents have been issued for advanced concepts for         unmanned systems' control and other aspects, including McCall et         al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,714; Breakfield et al. U.S. Pat. No.         6,859,729; Bruemmer et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,211,980; and others.         Relay systems for remote controls are also extremely well         developed. In fact the mission operators for the Predator UAV's         flown in Afghanistan are all stationed in Nevada, doing their         work from about 12,000 miles away. Takeoffs and landings must         done in country by a very small number of controllers with a         small kit because the control delay inherent to satellite relays         exceeds acceptable UAV system limits for those events. By         staggering the launch and recovery schedules, however, the         reliability of transcontinental satellite relays allows a very         small number of on site people to support a very large number of         the remote mission controllers.

Overall the design work for all the robotic defilade component systems is entirely deterministic and well understood by persons skilled in the arts. Should there be a need for more concrete details as to specific mechanization alternatives, many of the RC vehicle manufacturers sell technical manuals over the Internet. This includes blow up diagrams of transmissions and other complex assemblies. Given the availability of these and other component suppliers' data and of equally accessible customer support consultation services, system design for anyone with basic skills in the arts is almost like catalog shopping.

The type of kill mechanism, the material, the size of the weapon, the hardness of the defended target, and the circumstances of the engagement all affect the final determination of sufficiency for an intervening barrier. It is not realistic to expect the warhead from an antitank missile 150 mm in diameter or a KE round fired from a 125 mm cannon at relatively close range to be deterred enough to save a light vehicle on the other side of a highly mobile barrier. In general, though, an intervening barrier with capabilities which are stout relative to the threat weapon should improve the survivability of the true targets and their occupants.

Objects and Advantages

Accordingly, besides alleviating the shortcomings of the prior art, several objects and advantages of the present invention are:

-   -   (a) to provide an external screening barrier more resistant to         heavy weapons effects than could have been deployed upon the         defended vehicles themselves;     -   (b) to be able to easily emplace the stout barrier so as to         trigger warhead detonation far enough from the true target that         the distance remaining may cause degradation of the weapon's         terminal performance;     -   (c) to not require the involvement of anyone at the engagement         site other than the commander who coordinates in real time with         the system controllers;     -   (d) when the threat is a high speed, fluid metal stream, to act         on the leading portion of the stream, the most energetic, which         decreases both the stream's ability to penetrate the true target         and its ability to create spall within the true target;     -   (e) to be effective at all angles of obliquity of the         penetration mechanism;     -   (f) pending specific implementations, to not be explosive and to         pose little or no harm to anyone near the vehicle nor to the         environment;     -   (g) pending specific implementations and once in position, to be         entirely passive and automatic with zero cycle time to full         effectiveness;     -   (h) to allow for multiple hits, even simultaneously, before         being repaired or replaced, given that no two hits occur in         exactly the same place and that the weapon striking the barrier         is not so massive as to destroy the barrier with that single         impact;     -   (i) to be configurable to provide different degrees of         protection and for different situations either via specified         interface provisions or merely by providing carriage space;     -   (j) to be easily transported to and from specific locations of         need;     -   (k) pending specific designs, to not require rare or dangerous         materials.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention the system comprises the integration of protective armor barrier systems on self propelled platforms operated using remote control. These protective vehicles are separate from the defended targets and able to be remotely or autonomously driven or both. The armor systems are comprised of one or more sheets of armor in a generally vertical presentation plus other complementary systems as preconfigured or as provided for with space and other interface provisions on the platforms. The robotic defilade vehicles may be parked in specific locations and then moved. Alternately they can placed in specific positions in formation with moving vehicles to be protected and kept there or repositioned as needed while the convoy continues unstopping. In this mode they are analogous to naval destroyers performing escort duties for an aircraft carrier. The survival of the robotic defilade vehicles is of much lower priority than that of the defended vehicles, people, and structures, and they can be used as sacrificial devices if necessary. A phrase that characterizes the system well is “guided proxy targets.”

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIGS. 1 a, 1 b, and 1 c show the three types of shaped charge warheads. (Prior Art)

FIG. 2 depicts the nominal functional configuration of the robotic defilade vehicle featuring a single vertical wall.

FIGS. 3 a, 3 b, and 3 c provide three views of the nominal production configuration, which is a stripped down pickup truck with an add on robotic defilade kit.

FIGS. 4 a, 4 b, and 4 c offer in two sheets top view depictions of the nominal production configuration in a view of the parts that are assembled and also the final assembly.

FIGS. 5 a and 5 b provide a side view depiction of the nominal production configuration in a view of the parts that are assembled and also the final assembly.

FIGS. 6 a and 6 b provide a front view depiction of the nominal production configuration in a view of the parts that are assembled and also the final assembly.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of the communications and control subsystems on the functional configuration of the robotic defilade vehicle.

FIG. 8 depicts a patrol being supported by a remote controller for the robotic defilade vehicles via radio relays through an overhead unmanned aerial vehicle.

FIG. 9 depicts three patrols being supported by controllers simultaneously from a single, remote, protected location via UAV relay.

FIG. 10 depicts the disposition of forces entering a street at the start of an assault.

FIG. 11 depicts the positioning of the robotic defilade vehicles prior to the entry of the troops onto the battlefield.

FIG. 12 depicts an escorted vehicle patrol preparing to enter a street.

FIG. 13 illustrates the preliminary positioning of the robotic defilade vehicles to screen the patrol from potential weapons emplacements.

FIG. 14 depicts the situation after the patrol has progressed a short distance and been attacked.

FIG. 15 shows the patrol clearing the street with the robotic defilade vehicles repositioned to cover the exit.

FIG. 16 illustrates an alternative, nominal, functional configuration of the robotic defilade vehicle with two walls leaning against each other instead of a single wall.

DRAWINGS Reference Numerals

FIGS. 8 through 15 depict three different tactical scenarios. Between views of the same general scenario the numbers have been repeated for the vehicles to which they pertain. Between different scenarios new numbers have been assigned to reflect the likelihood that the configurations will differ in some way.

-   18 Metal liner for acutely conical liner shaped charge warhead -   19 Metal liner for hemispherical liner shaped charge warhead -   20 Metal liner for explosively forged penetrator shaped charge     warhead -   22 Flat bed, self propelled transport platform -   24 Armor sheet emplaced as a wall -   26 Lateral supports -   28 Stability weight -   30 a,b Cameras covering each end of the vehicle -   32 Run flat tires -   34 Ballistically hardened wheels -   36 Protective enclosure for vehicle control system -   38 Redundant antennas for the control system external links -   40 Front view of nominal production configuration -   42 Side view of nominal production configuration -   44 Top view of nominal production configuration -   45 Delivered basic truck platform with automotive capabilities -   46 Pickup truck ladder frame -   48 Radiator and cooling system -   50 Engine -   52 Transmission -   54 Military ballistically hardened wheel and run-flat tire     assemblies -   56 Drive shaft -   58 Differential -   60 a-d Axles -   62 Command and control system -   70 Front end armor assembly -   72 Front plate -   74 a,b Wing plates -   76 a,b Front side plates -   78 Front top plate -   80 Front assembly rear plate -   82 Cooling system feed assembly -   84 Headlights -   86 Multi spectrum visual and infrared camera -   90 Transmission armor assembly -   92 Top plate -   94 Transmission side armor plate -   100 Vertical barrier assembly -   102 Vertical armor plate -   104 a,b Forward lateral braces -   106 a,b Aft lateral braces -   108 a,b Lateral mounting cross beams -   110 Beam-to-frame spacer -   120 Rear wheel armor assemblies -   122 a,b Rear wheel armor top plates -   124 a,b Front armor plates -   126 a,b Outside side armor plates -   127 a,b Inside side armor plates -   128 a,b Rear armor plates -   140 Lateral underside keepout armor plate -   150 Vehicle platform in functional block diagram -   152 Protective armored enclosure for communications, control, and     other systems -   154 External communications system -   156 Vehicle interface and control system -   158 Wire bundle -   160 a,b Dual communications antennas -   162 Wire harness -   164 Wire harness for electrical power -   166 Vehicle's electrical power system -   168 Wire harness to seven servos -   170 a-g Seven servos -   172 a-g Seven vehicle subsystems -   174 Wire harness for cameras -   176 a,b Cameras -   180 Patrol leader's vehicle -   182 a,b Robotic defilade vehicles -   184 Debris pile -   186 Parked car -   188 Operator for the robotic defilade vehicles -   190 Stone wall around military base -   192 Large antenna -   194 Unmanned aerial vehicle with radio relay capabilities -   196 Radio transmissions between the operator and the patrol elements -   198 Patrol scenario 1 -   200 Patrol scenario 2 -   202 Patrol scenario 3 -   210 a,b Manned vehicles -   212 a-d Robotic defilade vehicles -   214 Street where attack will run -   216 Building where the raid will be conducted -   218 Sidewalk -   220 a,b Parked cars -   222 Debris pile -   232 a, b Manned patrol vehicles -   234 a-d Unmanned robotic defilade vehicles -   236 a-c Vehicles parked at curb -   238 Pile of debris -   240 Vector for initial penetrating capabilities of EFP -   242 a,b Vectors for residual debris of EFP -   250 a,b Dual sheets of armor functioning as walls -   252 Screen used to exclude hand grenades and other objects

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention the system comprises a plurality of features to remotely control and maneuver vehicles transporting erect and braced armor barriers between the defended targets and suspected threat positions and to relocate them as necessary throughout the conduct of the mission. This includes the ability to have these remote systems travel alongside the defended vehicles or in positions advantageous to the defense at varying speeds. Within the system the only major variability with cascading effects is in the size and weight of the armor required to defeat the different threats and the size of the truck platform to support that wall. Command and control systems of all types are expected to be readily accommodated. The other parts are unchanged from armor carrier to armor carrier except for limited increases in size of the defensive armor and fitments to accommodate the larger vehicles. These dimensional changes are much less than proportionate to the increases in the vehicles' payloads.

FIG. 2 illustrates the nominal functional configuration. The baseline is for protection of the HMMWV. The transport platform 22 is a self-propelled, flat bed transporter similar in appearance to the Marine Corps' mule vehicle configured with a wall of steel armor 24 vertically mounted and suitably braced by rigid supports 26. The wall is five feet tall, seven feet long, one inch thick, and weighs approximately 1,435 pounds. The height of the load floor of the carrier vehicle is equal to the height of the interior floor in the passenger compartment of a HMMWV. This latter dimension defines the lowest edge of the protected area. Stability weights to help control the tipping moment of the wall are installed on the underside of the platform toward the lateral edges and are visible in the illustration for the near side at 28. The vehicle has television cameras 30 a and 30 b operating in the visual spectrum, the infrared spectrum, or both. These are positioned on the front and back ends to allow the remote operator to at least be able to drive the vehicle forward and backward, including inserting it into parking places between other vehicles. A camera mounting implementation that allows the operator to see in all directions as could an onboard driver would be highly desirable. The vehicle has an engine, transmission, steering, braking, and all other standard automotive systems. All automotive systems are mounted under the bed. The automotive systems are shielded by armor. The tires 32 are of run flat design, and the wheels 34 are hardened for ballistic survivability.

The vehicle features a control system located within an armored enclosure 36 and capable of driving the vehicle in response to external commands or autonomously. A redundant antenna system 38 is provided for the external links. The fixing of the different parts to the transport bed and to each other may be done by brackets, welding, or other means well understood by those skilled in the art of mechanical and electrical assembly.

Developing a Preliminary Production Design—the Barrier Wall

The defeat of all the weapons identified except the largest can be enhanced by triggering the detonation of the warhead as early as possible or by intercepting the fluid metal or projectile as far from the target as possible. This can be done tactically by externally or autonomously guided, self-propelled platforms that mount an erect wall of armor and can be driven to positions between the targets and the likely ambush weapon's positions. The first effect of said barrier is to degrade the opportunity for the shooter to get an unobstructed view prior to firing. This will make it harder for him or her to select as their aim point an area of known weakness. The second is to absorb enough destructive power in a sacrificial proxy target for the real target's defensive structure to defeat any residual destructive elements. The parametric trades that govern are the effective mass and weight of the barrier versus the power of the attacking weapon. The number of charge diameters from the barrier to the true target will also be significant for some weapons. Each of the main factors is constrained by military logistics and tactics. The objective is to create a relationship between the barrier and the threat weapons where the following are true.

-   -   Acute Conical and Hemispherical Liner Products. The stout         intermediate barrier will force an acute conical or         hemispherical liner warhead on a missile to detonate earlier         than planned, making the remaining distance to the target more         likely to be unfavorable to the attacker due to excessive         standoff. For both warhead design types the portion of the jet         below the critical speed will experience truncation. The slug         formed by the acutely conical liner weapon will be arrested. As         a result of high expenditures of mass and energy in the erosion         through the barrier and in the creation of all the side effects;         the residual jet of the acutely conical liner weapon or the         blended jet-slug mass of the hemispherical liner weapon will         have relatively low power as it exits the barrier.     -   EFP Dart and KE Projectile. The barrier will bleed off critical         amounts of the destructive energy, either stopping the mass         completely or reducing the power in the residual to levels         within the capabilities of the target's own armor.     -   HESH. The explosive coating will be deployed entirely against         the barrier, and its effects will not reach the real target.

There is a high probability that heavy weapons impacting the barrier will create spall in the immediate area on the back side of the wall. It may be desirable to affix spall liners or other spall restraint devices to both sides of the wall to control that debris.

Given the variety of weapons and their different kill mechanisms, it is difficult to identify a single parameter that will ensure they all are neutralized. Where IED's are a significant threat, however, it may be useful to base the solution on the diameter of the largest explosively formed projectile likely to be encountered. It would be useful to calculate the size of the largest explosively forged penetrator dart such a device could create if it had been built under precision manufacturing conditions. Then plan to defeat that dart. That is because explosively forged penetrator darts have higher penetration capabilities than most battlefield KE weapons and the fragments of omni-directional blast and fragmentation weapons. Moreover, since most IED's are not manufactured under precision conditions, their actual performance will normally be considerably less than the high precision weapon dart used to select the barrier. That means that planning for the precision dart provides margin against the less powerful weapon that is more likely to be encountered.

To deal with the weapons that may have more hard armor penetration capabilities than the explosively forged penetrator, that is to say hemispherical and acute angle liner weapons of the same diameter, the loss of performance in those weapons when they have been imprecisely manufactured is also severe. Thus, designing to defeat a precision manufactured dart of a particular diameter may be enough to totally defeat a jet creating weapon of the same diameter but which was imprecisely manufactured. Further, if they do penetrate the barrier, the mass and power of their residual penetration debris will be greatly reduced. This residual will also be less likely to travel a large number of charge diameters to the real target without experiencing enough degradation due to jet breakup and spreading to make the debris more susceptible to the point defenses of that target.

A first order estimator for stopping a precision EFP dart comes from David Chi in TMW. In his article “Fundamentals of Penetration Mechanics—Jets and Rods” the chart on page 481 and the relevant text suggest that a thickness of metal approximately 70% of the length of a dart of the same material should be enough to entirely stop the dart. There are a number of specific baseline conditions that pertain to the chart and the data and that explicitly limit the extrapolation of the information. Nonetheless, it is useful to use this as a first measure of sufficiency. It would suggest that a six inch steel dart should be able to be stopped by a steel barrier about 4½ inches thick. This gives us a standard from which to construct a test model for evaluation versus the threat weapons within the Requirement. Based on the length and height of the barrier needed to screen the vehicle that we have taken as representative of the mission, this also allows us the ability to calculate the weight of the barrier and then to select from amongst the various trucks for one with adequate payload. This is the point where the design of the robotic defilade vehicle for front line, heavy infantry combat diverges from that for an urban police force asset.

Developing a Preliminary Production Design—the Carrier Vehicle

FIGS. 3 a, 3 b, and 3 c are front 40, side 42, and top side 44 views of a nominal production configuration assembly. This configuration differs from the functional configuration in that it will do the job much less expensively than a custom designed machine. The nominal production configuration is based on conversion of a standard heavy duty pickup truck in a configuration even more stripped down than is the chassis cab. Everything not directly related to making the vehicle move, turn, brake, back up, or perform other over the road tasks will be absent when it is delivered. In fact, since it will have neither the cab nor the controls that would be in the cab, the vehicles will either have to be towed or carried from the assembly point to all subsequent stops in production up to the time of build up into the robotic vehicle. Alternately a remote control device could be developed.

The vertical barrier is four feet tall. The vertical barrier assembly sits upon the lowest stretch of the aft ladder frame. This is several inches below the height where the truck box normally sits due to the up curvature of the frame aft of the front wheels and forward of the back wheels. The height of the lower edge of the truck frame is about seven inches. The lower edge of the vertical wall is approximately two feet above the ground. The combined height of the installation is 4 feet, seven inches. The bottom edge of the main armor plate is about a foot above the floor of the HMMWV passenger compartment. All this together means that the barrier itself does not have to be as tall as it would be otherwise, a weight savings. The frame of the truck, however, needs for extra armor to be attached to it to protect the lower part of the HMMWV protected envelope, which is below the lower edge of the main vertical armor plate. With the protection offered by the vehicle body armor and engine block the total length of protection stretching from the front of the engine to the aft end of the barrier is about 11 feet, or 50% longer than the required HMMWV protected area.

The dual antennas for the command and control system will be affixed to the wall on either side in a way that provides optimal survivability for the linkage and redundancy.

FIGS. 4 a, 4 b, and 4 c offer on two sheets a more detailed depiction of the top view. In FIG. 4 a is said top view assembly 44. In FIG. 4 b is the delivered basic truck platform with automotive capabilities 45, and above it appear the assemblies of the kit. Pickup truck components include the ladder frame 46; radiator and cooling assembly 48; engine 50; transmission 52; and the wheel and tire assemblies 54 a-d. The wheel and tire assemblies that came with the truck have been swapped for military assemblies, run-flat tires mounted on ballistically hardened wheels. The drive shaft is 56; the differential 58; and the axles 60 a-d. At the top in 4 b the assemblies are shown, and in 4 c on the next sheet the parts that comprise those assemblies are depicted. The assemblies are the front end armor assembly 70, the transmission armor assembly 90, the vertical barrier assembly 100, the rear wheel armor assembly 120, and the lateral underside keepout armor plate 140.

On sheet 5/17 the front end armor assembly 70 comprises the front plate 72; the wing plates 74 a,b; the front side plates 76 a,b; the front top plate 78; and the front assembly rear plates 80 a,b. The transmission assembly 90 comprises the top plate 92. The vertical barrier assembly 100 comprises the vertical armor plate 102; the forward lateral braces 104 a,b; and the aft lateral braces 106 a,b. The rear wheel armor assemblies 120 comprise the rear wheel armor top plates 122 a,b; front plates 124 a,b; side plates 126 a,b; and rear plates 128 a,b. The lateral underside keepout armor plate is 140.

From the top view it is clear that most of the ladder frame is not physically covered but is open to the air. Some approach will be required to keep hand grenades and satchel charges from being lofted into the space below the vehicle. One approach is a very tight mesh of chain link fence fabric attached to the vertical barrier at the top of the fore and aft support braces 104 a,b and 106 a,b and anchored to said ladder frame. Also to be defined for specific designs is what in addition to the fixed armor explicitly identified will be used to protect the drive shaft and underside of the vehicle. The ladder frame itself may need to have additional steel attached to it in some places to make its pierce resistance higher. This would help protect the transmission, drive shaft, and differential. Other options for protecting the underside revolve around object deflectors, armor, or a combination.

FIGS. 5 a and 5 b offer a more detailed depiction of the side view. In FIG. 5 a is said front view assembly 42. In FIG. 5 b is a stack up of the assemblies that might be fabricated to create parts for the conversion kit. Parts that were previously depicted are the basic truck platform 45, military wheel and tire assemblies 54 a and 54 b, the front armor assembly 70, the vertical armor assembly 100, and the rear wheel armor assemblies 120. Parts not previously shown are the command and control assembly 62, the transmission armor side panel 94, and three new parts of the vertical wall assembly.

The command and control assembly is where the system processor, power supply, communications, and vehicle interface functions are carried out. It occupies a space within the engine compartment. It is designed to fit the available space without raising the height of the engine compartment. Clearly the final design for each model vehicle will be unique.

The new parts of the vertical armor assembly are items 108 a, 108 b, and item 110. Parts 108 a and 108 b are the frame spanning lateral mounting cross beams. Part 110 is the beam-to-frame spacer. There are two parts 110 on the vehicle, one atop the frame on either side of the transmission. Parts 108 a and 108 b are mounted athwart the frame to carry the weight of the wall. Part 108 b mounts to the frame. Part 108 a mounts to part 110 on either side of the transmission. These spacers are necessary because the transmission rises above the frame. To accommodate this profile the wall itself has a notch cut across the bottom, and the spacers accommodate the physical mating of the forward cross beam. The lateral underside keepout armor plate is not depicted because it attaches to the inside edge of the lower part of the rear wheel armor assemblies, and in that position it is masked from the side.

FIGS. 6 a and 6 b offer a more detailed depiction of the front view. In FIG. 6 a is said front view assembly 40. In FIG. 6 b is a stack up of the assemblies that might be fabricated to create parts for the conversion kit. Parts that were previously depicted include the basic truck platform 45, military wheel and tire assemblies 54 a and 54 b, the command and control assembly 62, the vertical armor assembly 100, the rear wheel armor assembly 120, the lateral underside keepout armor plate 140, and some of the parts of the front armor assembly 70. These include the front plate 72 and the wing plates 74 a and 74 b. New parts for the front end are the cooling system feed assembly 82, the headlights 84, and the front camera system 86. The cooling system feed assembly provides protection for the vehicle radiator while minimizing resistance to cooling air. The camera system is multi spectral visual and infrared. Parts 127 a,b are the inside side armor plates of the rear wheel armor assemblies. With respect to the vertical armor system it is worth noting the positions into which parts 108 a, 108 b, and part 110 fit to support the vertical wall.

Table 1 tabulates for the two wheels per rear axle variant of the Ford F-350 the nominal dimensions and weights for the body armor assemblies and their constituent parts. These weights were estimated based on manual measurements for three of the vehicles in the Ford F-series lineup and rough drawings of the vehicles when covered with armor instead of the standard sheet metal. Panels have not been optimized and are intended primarily to illustrate applicable weight budgets.

TABLE 1 Nominal Weight Budget for Vehicle Body Armor (Density of steel 20.4 lb/sq ft for 0.5 inch thick; 10.2 lb/sq ft for 0.25 inch thick) Assembly Item Steel # Dimensions Pounds Front end Nose Sheet 0.5 in 1 6 ft W × 3.4 ft H 416 armor Front wings 0.5 in 2 3.4 ft H × 1.7 ft W 236 Front sides 0.5 in 2 3.4 ft H × 3.4 ft W 472 Engine cover 0.25 in  1 4.8 ft W × 6 ft 294 H less 2 triangular corners 1 ft × 1.33 ft Aft close 0.5 in 2 Assume ⅓ the 139 outs size of the front sheet Total 1557 Transmission Cover 0.25 in  1 2.5 ft W × 1 ft H 26 Armor Sides 0.5 in 2 2.5 ft W × 1 ft H 102 Aft end 0.5 in 1 1 ft W × 1 ft H 20 Total 148 Rear wheel Side sheet 0.5 in 2 3.3 ft W × 2.1 ft H 283 armor Top sheet 0.25 in  2 3.3 ft W × 2.8 ft H 188 Fore sheet 0.5 in 2 2.8 ft W × 2.1 ft H 240 Aft sheet 0.5 in 2 2.8 ft W × 2.1 ft H 240 Inside sheet 0.25 in  2 3.3 W × 1.7 ft H 114 Total 1065 Underside Aft lat uside 0.5 in 1 1.25 ft H × 5 ft W 128 protection keep out Total 2898

No provision has been made for servicing the vehicle. A design for servicing will absolutely depend upon what vehicle is selected as the basis. The general strategy in the selection of vehicle protective armor for the nominal configuration is to force the enemy to use at least light machine guns rather than just assault rifles to penetrate the vertical, outward facing armor that protects the vehicle itself. Sacrificing a vehicle's mobility to discover the location of a machine gun is normally a very acceptable trade off, especially if the vehicle can probably be retrieved and repaired later. Armor materials other than steel may present a better overall systems solution to meeting this objective.

The actual dimensions, weights, and armor protection of the kit will depend upon the type of truck selected to carry it and vice versa. The Ford Motor Company publicly lists the characteristics for its different models. Table 2 shows sample calculations of what payloads different trucks could handle, given publicly available data and estimates for the rest. What is important is not the specific values but the process of comparing the weights of the kit components other than the barrier wall to the payload to find the available payload capability for carrying a barrier.

Table 2 tabulates the payload capabilities of several Ford trucks in their chassis cab configuration. It also lists the weights for the protective vehicle armor and an allowance for structure. The allowance for structure is the weight of the fixtures to secure the protective armor and the barrier armor, and it is estimated to be half the weight of the protective armor. The weight of the command and control system is considered negligible. The difference between the payload and the sum of the protective armor and the allowance for structure is the payload capability left over and available for the barrier wall itself. Therefore, based upon the need for a wall of a given thickness, it is possible to go into the table and pick the vehicles that should be able to accommodate that load. It is also possible to identify the nearest larger vehicles that might be worth considering in the event that additional payload is artificially injected into the Requirements to represent margin for extremely hot environments. For example, the 5 inch wall needed nominally to stop a 7 inch dart of the same material would require the payload of the F-550. The analysts might also want to look at the larger F-650 or F-750 as potentially better suited to carry the required load and have margin for high temperatures or steep terrain.

TABLE 1 Vehicle Capabilities for Carrying Armor Kits Allowance Remainder Pay- Vehicle for Available Barrier Vehicle load Armor Structure for Barrier Thickness F-350 SRW 4,700 2,688 1,344 668 <1 inch chassis cab F-350 DRW 6,700 2,898 1,449 2,353 ~2 inches chassis cab F-450 DRW 9,100 2,898 1,449 4,753 3.5 inches chassis cab F-550 DRW 11,000 2,898 1,449 6,653 ~5 inches chassis cab F-650 Kick Up 18,186 Not calculated Frame chassis cab F-650 Straight 20,800 Frame chassis cab F-750 chassis 24,433 cab

To protect a Stryker, which has a protected surface several times that of the HMMWV, would require one of the larger vehicles. An F-750 truck has a payload capacity of 24,433 pounds, so it may be adequate to meet this need. As previously noted, the Stryker needs less complementary off-vehicle armor than the HMMWV. Modification of a basic Stryker/LAV vehicle is another option. Such a vehicle would undoubtedly be more robust and agile, but its cost would be a multiple of that for the robotic defilade vehicle. The deciding factor may be the proportion of urban versus off road action envisioned.

Developing a Preliminary Production Design—the Command and Control System

FIG. 7 is a nominal block diagram for the interfacing of the control system and the vehicle subsystems. In the illustration the vehicle platform is 150. The armored external shell 152 encloses and protects the external communications system 154 and the vehicle interface and control system 156. The external communications system is connected by a wire harness 158 to the dual antennas 160 a,b. The external communications system and the vehicle interface and control system are connected by a wire harness 162. Another wire harness 164 connects the vehicle interface and control system to the vehicle's electrical power system 166. Within the vehicle interface and control system is a precision power supply that converts the vehicle power to the various types of power needed for communications and control. The control system depicted has a wire harness 168 running from it to seven mechanical servos 170 a-g for seven vehicle subsystems 172 a-g. Five of the vehicle subsystems are the starting and electrical subsystem, the steering subsystem, the transmission control subsystem, the accelerator control subsystem, and the braking subsystem. The other subsystems may be smoke generators, lights, or defensive systems. It is not necessary to identify on this nominal diagram which servos and which subsystems represent particular functions. It will be necessary, however, to do so on actual developmental systems' diagrams. The cameras are integrated by wiring harness 174 and represented by 176 a,b. This is a nominal command and control system for illustrative purposes and can be expanded as necessary.

The architecture of the control system with servos is very similar to control systems widely in use around the world by enthusiasts who operate remotely controlled model cars, boats, airplanes, and other remotely controlled models. As previously noted, these systems have been used by adults and children around the world for decades. It would actually be possible to tailor the control system for the robotic defilade system from selected models of these commercially available RC systems. Some RC systems in fact provide more capabilities than are required for the robotic defilade system. The TRAXXAS T-Maxx, an off-road RC car model less than 22 inches in length and easily hand-carried, for example, not only has remotely operated throttle, steering, and four wheel braking actuators, but a suspension system with eight shock absorbers and a four wheel drive transmission. This transmission has a reverse gear and a two speed, auto-shifter-controlled forward drive. The transmission is patented, U.S. Pat. No. 6,367,345. Many of the RC model manufacturers sell full sets of technical and support manuals over the Internet including exploded view diagrams for complex assemblies. They also provide customer support technical consultation.

The actual interfaces may be from electrical power to mechanical power by means of a mechanical servo driven by outputs of the control system as depicted in the figure. Alternatively they may be electrical to electrical, depending on the way the subsystems are implemented, or electrical to pneumatic. The subsystem mechanisms themselves may be implemented using mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, electro magnetic, or other implementations that are well understood by persons skilled in automotive, electrical, and other engineering disciplines. Depending upon the specific implementation, additional wires, cables, pressure sources, and other fixtures may be installed.

The primary control for vehicle operation is command guidance using radio links between the operator and the robotic defilade vehicle. For enhanced tactical integrity and safety the principal mode of operation is for control to be performed by a remotely located operator talking to the local tactical commander in real time. Control by a person within the commander's formation is also possible; it is less desirable because it means someone in the formation is unable to concentrate on driving a manned vehicle or operating a weapon. Local control may be necessary, though, in the event the controller becomes unable to operate the link. Given the open radio link, suitable methods for ensuring that the enemy can't capture or block the control link are critical.

The vehicle will also transmit data to the controller and others as implemented. This robotic, defilade vehicle transmitted data would be the imagery from the cameras; status information such as fuel quantity remaining and other automotive status data; mission data; and other signals as designed. The vehicle is an unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, and as such it is the ground based equivalent to an extremely long endurance guided missile. Control and guidance options, in addition to command guidance, may include any or all of the options available to a missile. This means a multitude of guidance options are available with minimal risk. Some of these approaches have been incorporated into U.S. patents, including those by McCall et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,714; Bruemmer et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,211,980; and Plishner Application 20070233337.

The use of any earth bound, airborne, and space based remote retransmission systems available is an integral feature of command guidance using radio linkages. This allows the system to overcome curvature of the earth issues and other problems that normally constrain ranges during tactical operations. The onboard sensors can transmit to a very remote controller as directed, and the remote controller can control multiple systems at great distances from his own position. The biggest issue in this regard is to ensure that the controller can at all times give every supported unit the attention it needs and to not become over tasked trying to operate too many machines at once. It may be necessary to limit a controller to one or two machines unless automation allows him to deal with more.

Multiple simultaneous, escorted patrols could be run throughout an entire city with real time maneuvering of the robotic defilade vehicles with no increase whatsoever in the workload of anyone in the potential line of fire except that the commander would be coordinating with the escort controllers. No one at any of the scenes would be distracted by a need to personally control the escort vehicles, although that mode would be available as an option.

A single such patrol is depicted in FIG. 8. In this figure the patrol leader's vehicle 180 is in between two robotic defilade vehicles 182 a and 182 b. They shield the patrol vehicle from potential ambush positions in the debris pile 184 and the parked car 186. The operator for the robotic defilade vehicles is in a safe position 188 inside a base behind stone walls 190. The operator has vehicle control and communications capabilities via the large antenna 192. Overhead an unmanned aerial vehicle 194 performs radio relay with real time transmissions 196 between the operator and the patrol elements.

The onboard control system employs at least one computer and is capable of at least limited autonomous operation as well as operation under the control of the remote controller. The baseline control system features instructions sent to each robotic defilade vehicle by the controller. The input device may be a joystick with control levers or some other system for providing steering, acceleration, and braking plus the ability to start and turn off the engine and to operate mission and other subsystems. This is almost identical to the approach used by the RC systems worldwide.

Alternate guidance modes are semi active homing, beam riding, semi active command to line of site, and autonomous. Linkages are radio, laser, wire, and fiber optic cable. Signals will be unambiguously addressed to specific robotic defilade vehicles and will feature encryption or other security measures as necessary to prevent either natural conditions or the enemy from being able to interfere with continuous, effective control.

-   -   An example of semi active laser homing is for an on scene         controller to utilize coded lasers to indicate positions to be         taken by individual robotic defilade vehicles. To implement this         capability the robotic defilade vehicle being controlled would         have a laser receiver capable of receiving the laser light         reflected from the location marked, decoding and confirming the         validity of the instructions, and entering the data into an         onboard guidance controller. This is well known as laser target         marking, and it has been implemented in numerous guided bombs         and missiles.     -   Beam riding could be implemented by installing drift sensors on         the vehicle and having a control beam transmitted from an on         scene controller to make the vehicle go in the desired         direction. This guidance is kind of like controlling the         direction of a horse one is riding through the manipulation of         the reins. Beam riding is a staple approach for missile         guidance.     -   Another method for control would be to load into the vehicle's         computer before the mission the coordinates of a route or path         to be followed, and let the vehicle generate its own steering         and driving instructions. It would do this using electronic         position references such as inertial sensors and the Global         Positioning System, or GPS, and it would perform the navigation         computations on its own processor. This is similar to how cruise         missiles sometimes work. These coordinates could be transmitted         after departure as well as updates to the route, depending upon         the configuration.

For local control during logistical or tactical placement the development of handheld controllers linked by wire, fiber optic cable, optical, or radio would allow people on foot to walk the vehicles to where they are needed.

While the primary mode of guidance will be command guidance, the permutations of the guidance options are numerous. All the guidance technologies have been extremely well proven, and they are well understood by designers skilled in missile guidance and in the expanding business of UGV control.

Developing the Baseline Preliminary Design—Cost

The recurring unit cost for a robotic defilade vehicle should be considerably less than $100,000 each. The price quoted on the Ford web site on 19 Aug. 2007 for a fully equipped F-450 with the 6.4 liter diesel engine, five speed automatic transmission, 4×2 drive, two wheels per side on the rear axle, and a 14,500 pound gross vehicle weight was approximately $40,000. Delivered in a configuration stripped to less than chassis cab, the automotive platform should cost less than $30,000. The remote control system can be derived from commercial unit selling for a few hundred dollars each, so a militarized version should be available for something in the single digit thousands. The rest of the robotic defilade vehicle is an armor wall; an armored exterior; the fittings and supports to mount all the added equipment; military ballistically hardened wheels with run flat tires; and assembly and delivery.

Operation of the Preferred Embodiment—FIGS. 9 through 15

FIG. 9 depicts three simultaneous patrols in different scenarios 198, 200, and 202 around a city. The patrols are being supported by controllers 188 in a single protected location behind stone walls 190 with a powerful transmitter 192. An overhead UAV 194 allows real time communications 196 between all parties. With high altitude, overhead relay such as shown in the figure these patrols could be scattered over a whole state or wider, depending upon the terrain. Barring excessive latency in the relays, any delays in the robotic defilade vehicles moving as directed by the local commander would probably be less due to the physical separation of the commander from the controller than from the time it takes for one human to respond to another's instructions.

A satellite could have been used in the illustration instead of a UAV, but there are latency issues that exist with a satellite that don't with a dedicated UAV. Latency issues can be critical when a remote device is being operated. This is why Predator UAV's operated on their missions in Afghanistan from bases in the United States are nonetheless operated exclusively for their takeoffs and landings by in country controllers.

Another major issue arises with the authorization to use a given relay asset and the authority to reassign the use of that asset. Satellites tend to be national command level assets. That means they are controlled from the Pentagon or a similar remote location with multiple layers of authority and protocol. Most UAV's are owned and controlled by local tactical commanders. This means that getting and keeping control of a relay platform at any moment is much, much less of a problem for subordinate tactical commanders when it is a UAV.

In any case where multiple methods for control are provided, a method should be provided for determining which guidance system has priority for actually having control of the driving mechanisms. There should also be an order of precedence for all the others. Such prioritization based on an algorithm or set of decision rules is well understood by persons skilled in the art of software design and development for control systems, especially in the field of missile guidance.

The robotic defilade system encompasses all the elements integrated together: barrier, carrier, and control system. Additional capabilities can be added by placing them upon the platform. To the extent that greater automation can be injected into any of the processes, then that also would be considered part of the overall system. Additional features are inherently possible by the nature of the system elements.

Operation for Assault Support

In FIG. 10 two manned vehicles 210 a,b and four robotic defilade vehicles 212 a-212 d enter a street 214 and approach a building 216 wherein a raid will be conducted. The building is at the end of the street and just across a sidewalk 218. Two vehicles 220 a,b are parked at the curb, and a debris pile 222 straddles the sidewalk. The robotic defilade vehicles are controlled by a remote controller who is not depicted but who is in continuous coordination with the patrol leader.

In FIG. 11 three of the four robotic defilade vehicles 212 a-c have been deployed by the remote operators to protect troops assaulting the building against ambush weapons in the parked cars 220 a,b or the debris pile 222. The fourth 212 d has been positioned to provide physical cover in front of the target building 216. Alternative dispositions could have been made, and if the tactical situation evolves to reveal better dispositions, the barrier carriers can be repositioned as needed.

Operation for Patrol Support

FIG. 12 illustrates a vehicle patrol consisting of two manned vehicles 232 a, 232 b and four unmanned robotic defilade vehicles 234 a-d. The street has three vehicles 236 a-c parked at the curb and a pile of debris 238 adjacent to the road. The robotic defilade vehicles are controlled by a remote controller who is not depicted but who is in continuous coordination with the patrol leader.

-   -   FIG. 13 illustrates a preliminary deployment of three robotic         defilade vehicles 234 a, 234 b, and 234 d screening two parked         vehicles 236 b, 236 c and the debris pile 238. The fourth         robotic defilade vehicle 234 c has been positioned to the right         rear quarter of vehicles 232 a,b to provide cover from that         quadrant and to move in formation with the manned vehicles.

FIG. 14 illustrates progress of the patrol. An ambush has been executed from the debris pile 238 involving firing of an EFP with an initial vector 240 at the lead manned vehicle 232 a. The robotic defilade vehicle 234 d adjacent to the debris pile has shielded the manned vehicle and interposed significant mass into the path of the EFP. The EFP debris, partially deenergized and partially deflected as shown by debris vectors 242 a,b, strikes the target vehicle on its armor in non critical locations and fails to destroy the target or injure the occupants.

FIG. 15 shows the patrol clearing the area. The robotic defilade vehicle 234 c has been maneuvered to take a position adjacent to the first parked car 236 a. Robotic vehicle 234 a has taken the aft flanking position on the manned vehicle 232 b. The line of parked vehicles 236 a-c is completely screened from the manned vehicles 232 a, 232 b by the robotic defilade vehicles 234 a-d. Whether 234 d is salvageable or not, it has successfully completed its mission and shielded 232 a from a potentially lethal attack.

Additional Embodiments

The shape of the armor sheet can be varied from a constant thickness to one which is broadest at the bottom and narrowest at the top, and in other profiles. These different profiles have implications for the vehicle's roll stability and for the weapons stopping capability at each point on the surface as well as overall weight control.

While the baseline configuration depicts the armor plate barrier carried by the vehicle as being fabricated entirely of steel, alternatively a barrier composed entirely of composite materials or sandwiches of composite and metal may prove to be more effective. Materials may include aluminum; wood; composite materials including concrete and fiber composites of aramids, carbon, and glass; and other structural materials offering at least enough stiffness to trigger the detonator for the warhead of an incident missile. Steel armor brings mass while composite armor brings light weight and compressibility. Weight, durability, maintenance, versatility, and cost are critical factors in the final systems design.

The carrying platform may be towed instead of self propelled.

Whatever material it is constructed of, the thickness of the armor will reflect primarily the specific mission and two sets of parameters: the capabilities of the weapons against which it is intended to defend and the limits of the automotive systems which must transport it. For heavy weapons the armor will be thicker than when the weapons to be defeated are small in diameter or in power. Similarly the height will reflect the tactical requirements. It may be necessary to reduce the height or length of the barrier to provide requisite thickness overall while observing weight constraints.

An alternate usage may present a different set of requirements. That is where the barrier is not substituting for a thick masonry wall but for a hill top or a ridgeline to provide elevated observation and firing positions. In this case the weapons to defeat may be limited to machine guns, and the emphasis is on height and width for a given thickness. This certainly would be more in line with police requirements, but military police and area security forces may find it very useful as well.

FIG. 16 illustrates a variant of the functional configuration depicted in FIG. 2. The system features two walls of armor 250 a, 250 b which lean against each other over the longitudinal centerline of the vehicle and have their bases fixed near the periphery of the platform 22. For a given height of wall this design can not carry a total thickness of armor as great as the single sheet. That is because the inclination of the two sheets creates triangular shapes whose hypotenuses are longer than the height of the single sheet. Being longer, each must be thinner than the half thickness of the single sheet variant. A potential solution to this height disadvantage is to erect a vertical plate from the top of the junction of the two plates. The vertical plate would only be stiff enough to ensure that any warheads passing over the main barrier would at least have their fuzing triggers actuated. Moreover the lower height of the hard walls may not matter since the frame height of an American full size pickup truck is so high. Even with the upper edge of the barrier in the lower position it would still be too high for weapons concealed in most cars to be able to be pointed over the top of the barrier at a vehicle on the other side. To get such a shot line would require shooting through the side of a commercial truck or from the second floor of a nearby building. This cuts the number of places where ambush weapons can be hidden.

The cameras 30 a,b and antennas 38 in FIG. 16 are as in FIG. 2. The control system enclosure 36 is placed within the enclosure formed by the two walls. Physical barriers should be placed at the fore and aft entrances to the enclosure, the least of which would be a method to exclude hand grenades and other objects, such as the screen 252. The advantage of this design over the single sheet is greater inherent stability, which may allow higher speeds under most conditions. Also, some destructive mechanisms are more easily defeated the further out is their trigger activated. The closer to its base the dual wall variant takes a hit, the earlier is the attacking weapon detonated compared to the single, vertical sheet. It also provides better obliquity in almost all foreseeable close in attacks.

The baseline configurations of the embodiments utilize only the sheet armor for the protective mechanism. Additional systems could easily be mounted on the vehicle as follows:

-   -   Layered or explosive reactive armor could be emplaced on either         or both sides of the single vertical sheet. They could also be         placed on the inside, the outside, or both sides for the double         walled design. Other defensive devices could be similarly         installed to provide additional capabilities.     -   Additional, smaller sheets of metallic or non metallic armor         could be fitted to either vehicle. Similarly, separate, armored         containers enclosing non-metallic materials intended to         introduce compressibility into the penetration mechanics of         fluid metal streams could be emplaced to intercept the jet.     -   Liquid-filled bladders with high bursting strength may be useful         add on devices for use against projectiles. If the bladders are         compartmentalized, multiple hits can be absorbed.     -   The upper portion of the vehicle could be configured as a large         open or closed box with the sides being formed from vertical         armor sheets. This is not envisioned as ever being a manned         enclosure.     -   Where narrow clearance alongside the protected vehicles is         typical, such as in narrow streets and heavy traffic, very         narrow platforms can be designed with a feature to raise or         lower the suspension at each wheel to compensate. Another         alternative would be to shift the position of the armor to         compensate for surfaces which are sloped laterally. In other         words, where the pavement is sloped in a way that would tend to         cause the lateral center of gravity to move precariously toward         the lower fulcrum, a mechanism may be incorporated to tip the         top of the plate toward the upslope direction or to move the         plate so that it moves upslope on the vehicle bed. With the         armor weighing a ton or more, this second alternative may be too         heavy or too complex. To maintain reasonable rollover resistance         it may be necessary, even with these features, to limit the         height of the barrier, the mass of the barrier, or in some other         way reduce the contribution of the elevated armor to roll over         conditions.

To make a vehicle more versatile and more adaptable to whatever the tactical need, a variant design approach is to mount the barrier on a pivot that allows the wall or part of the wall to be swung some number of degrees from the longitudinal axis of the vehicle. This would allow it to be driven straight at a hostile position and still serve as a moving wall perpendicular to the engagement axis by riflemen. Given the weight of the wall for different shapes and thicknesses, the truck to carry it and whatever mechanism would be used for the off axis deployment would almost certainly have to be from at least one class above what would have otherwise been sufficient for a fixed barrier. The utility would probably be limited to the smaller end of the range of wall cross sections, but an inch of solid armor is a major advantage for both infantrymen and policemen when conducting an exchange of fire with armed hostiles. This would be vastly more useful and less expensive for the police than buying an APC for such encounters.

Additional functions may be assigned to the robotic defilade vehicle, including the following:

-   -   Missile guidance jammers, decoys, and other devices for         disabling at least temporarily a missile's guidance might be         installed. Devices that interfere with the gunner's capability         to track the target or to maintain effective control over his or         her missile's flight could be installed to degrade the terminal         accuracy.     -   Smoke generators and smoke grenade launchers could be installed         to enhance the concealment capabilities.     -   Other electronic warfare devices such as receivers for enemy         communications transmissions which may be intended to activate         cell phones or other radio devices used to trigger detonators         for ambush weapons. Counter transmitters and jammers may also be         installed.

The robotic defilade system may be implemented as a kit that is installed on vehicles other than those specifically described herein.

The embodiments disclosed herein are intended to be illustrative only, and those skilled in the art may visualize other, equivalent embodiments.

ADVANTAGES

Accordingly the reader will see that this invention provides a means for commanders to take with them into combat the self-propelled and remotely controlled equivalent of a very thick, reinforced concrete wall. Further he can move the wall as need be to influence the battle, and its movement will not distract any of his on scene people from manning weapons or driving manned vehicles.

The level of protection that can be incorporated in each of these walls is potentially several times as much as could be put on any of the vehicles that will be defended. Further the interposition of a stout barrier between the commanders' assets and the enemy firing positions will significantly degrade a number of weapons that require relatively close proximity to their targets for maximum effectiveness.

The component technologies in the barrier, the carrier, and the command and control system have been in production around the world for decades. Given multiple commercial and military sources for all the parts needed, a unit recurring price well below $100,000 per vehicle should be realizable.

Nothing comparable exists nor is likely to do so unless the idea is first developed outside the military acquisition and development communities which are wedded to control systems based on written Requirements. 

1.-10. (canceled)
 11. A method for protecting objects and personnel from attack comprising: (a) rigorously determining the Requirements including at a minimum what is to be protected, what the threat is, what the environment is, and what constitutes success; (b) selecting a barrier that will support the mission and defeat the threat specified; (c) selecting a vehicle as carrier that can carry the barrier reliably throughout the required environments; (d) designing the vehicle's armor system to protect the carrier vehicle itself and to complement the armor payload in shielding the protected object in accordance with the Requirements; (e) selecting a command and control system for the vehicle and the controller that will support the Requirements; (f) selecting complementary defensive devices and systems in accordance with the Requirements; (g) integrating the barrier, the carrier, the carrier armor, the command and control system, and all complementary devices and systems; and formally developing the production data package through an iterative set of steps incorporating successively greater levels of detail in the configurations designed and tested; whereby the performance standard set forth in the Requirements is met.
 12. A barrier which is mobile and self-propelled and able to accept direction or to generate guidance instructions for itself so as to position itself in a stationary or moving position between a stationary or moving protected object and a possible threat to said protected object and to maintain said position except as updated by externally or internally generated updated instructions in order as to completely or partially block access or view from said threat to said protected object to reduce the area or time of exposure or both of said protected object to said threat.
 13. The barrier of claim 12 wherein the mobility mechanisms are protected by a plurality of devices and systems from a group including run-flat tires; ballistically-hardened wheels; armored end caps and covers and steel or other armor materials added to the ladder frame or elsewhere to protect the drive train components and the vehicle underside, and keepout devices for the upper areas and the underside including chains and screens.
 14. The barrier of claim 12 wherein the vehicle has a suspension system capable of raising and lowering sides or wheels independently or in coordination.
 15. The barrier of claim 12 wherein the threat effects to be blocked come from a group of threat effects including observation of said protected object, position determination and location of said protected object, target designation to allow or support weapons guidance to said protected object, and the firing of weapons at or toward said protected object.
 16. The barrier of claim 12 wherein the barrier comprises a plurality of devices and systems from a group including said barrier vehicle's own armor, engine, and other structure; a mission armor payload structure; and complementary defensive devices.
 17. The barrier of claim 16 wherein the armor for said vehicle itself or in said mission armor payload structure is from a group including steel, aluminum, other metals, alloys, ceramics, concrete, construction materials, and containers of fluid.
 18. The barrier of claim 16 wherein said armor payload structure comprises a plurality of structures including single or multiple walls in vertical, horizontal, or slanted installations attached to the vehicle with fixed or movable joints.
 19. The system of claim 18 wherein the mechanism which mounts the wall has the capability to change the vertical alignment and the center of gravity of the wall with respect to the center of gravity of the carrier vehicle.
 20. The barrier of claim 16 wherein the complementary defensive devices comprise a plurality of passive devices to degrade the application of threat effects or to dissipate or inhibit threat effects upon said protected object from a group including counter-explosives devices like removable armor affixed or emplaced on said vehicle and counter-observation and counter-targeting devices such as screens which are completely or partially opaque to energy in the visual, infrared, laser, radar, or ultraviolet portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
 21. The barrier of claim 16 wherein the complementary defensive devices comprise a plurality of active devices and systems to detect or react against said threat or its effects in order to reduce their effectiveness from a group including electro-optical, radio, and acoustic signal detectors, analyzers, and jammers, smoke generators, and smoke grenade launchers.
 22. The barrier of claim 12 wherein the guidance and control system for the vehicular component uses guidance and control similar to that proven in guided missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles including remote control or self-generated guidance or both based on pre-programmed or downloaded instructions and using technical approaches from a group including cameras on the vehicle sending imagery to the controller; inertial, GPS, or other position-determination systems; and command, semi-active command-to-line-of-sight, semi-active homing, beam riding, and autonomous guidance mechanisms.
 23. The barrier of claim 23 wherein the agent controlling the vehicle uses linkages to the onboard control systems from a group including wire and fiber optic cable; radio and electro-optical transmissions; and relays via ground-based relays, unmanned aerial vehicles and other aircraft, and satellites. 